For Industrial Designers, creating for the sake of creating is not always the most successful way to develop a great marketable product. To create with purpose and give an object innate intent is a Designers main goal. Through the use of semiotics, or meaning-making, objects Design can be enhanced. Semiotics is a study of “signs” and is closely related to the field of linguistics in that you gather relationships and construct meanings surrounding, in this case, an object through the use of metaphors, analogies, and symbolism. These linguistic devices allow the Designer to create new ways to think about what an object is “saying” and truly giving an object and its Design meaning.
CLASSROOM STRATEGY AND PEDAGOGY
The use of metaphor allows the Designer to go beyond purely aesthetic qualities to a state of true designed bliss; a symbiotic relationship between aesthetic and the unseen inner characteristics of an object. By asking the student to think about what the object is “saying” they become more aware of the objects purpose, rather than just take for granted its innate qualities.
FIGURES 20-21
There are usually two ways in which to present this assignment. The first way is what I call a “smash together metaphor” design. An example of this is one that a colleague of mine completed during her graduate work. If I remember the story correctly, she had a bad incident with a pressure cooker when she was a young girl in India. And due to the incident has had a little bit of a fear of them since. Due to that fear, she wanted to combine her idea of what a pressure cooker is to her, her metaphor being a bomb, and what her final product would be. She ended up creating a pressure cooker that resembled the shape and look of a nineteen fifties cartoon bomb, complete with fuse and all.
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The second way of presenting this project aims to be a little more “heady” with the picking of the metaphors that describe the object. A constant example that I usually bring to my students attention is one to do with my water bottle. I carry a water bottle to class daily and often refer to it in my examples.
The dialogue concerning this version of this assignment often goes like this: Me: “What is a bottle?”
Student: “A container.”
Me: “What else is a container?”
Student: After some time…“A Box.” Someone usually replies.
Me: “Good. What’s another word that is synonymous with the word container or box?” Students: “Ummmm, a boat, a cup, a space, a vessel…”
Once I hear the word “vessel” I usually stop them and ask:
Me: “What else is a vessel besides a boat?” After a few minutes of them thinking about it I ask:
Me: “What about a mother? Would you consider your mom a vessel for you?”
I usually get a few bewildered faces and then explain to them that the bottle that I bring to class is not a whole lot different than that of a mother. I then finish by asking them:
Me: “So if how do I make my bottle look and feel like more of a ‘motherly’ object?”
And that is the point of the assignment. How do you take the internal/innate qualities of an object, discuss it in metaphor, and then re-design it to exude that intrinsic quality?
In the example below, one of my students took the concept of recycling and thought about what it really means to them. They decided that people needed to see the effects of their recycling efforts in a positive way, and created a system of “Giving Back”. They started the assignment with the idea of recycling and had a few first attempts at what a trash can really meant to them; re-designing it with more of the smash together technique. But as the assignment progressed for them, they found themselves dealing with more of a moral debate concerning the issues regarding the state of our consumption as a nation. They discovered, coupled with a reading from Cradle to Cradle
by William McDonough and Michael Braungart
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that the issues of recycling is more about one of convenience for people as well as an understanding of the effects of it. They used a tree’s ability to take nutrients and produce life as a metaphor for how we should be dealing with our level of consumption, and used that as a means to show to others the benefits of recycling and also becoming a conscious consumer.48
FIGURES 22-23
OUTCOMES
The purpose of the assignment is to allow students to gain an understanding of how to view the inherent and intrinsic qualities that exist within a work of art whether it is an object or a painting. The words semiotics and mysticism are the words that seem to encompass the most prevalent meaning for this assignment.
Mysticism means, psychologically, a sense of profound and moving identification with something not ourselves. It means also that the identity felt is not demonstrable, in the sense that a man’s legal nationality is demonstrable, or his membership in a club or other organization. In mystical states of mind, in other words, we are conscious of an expansion of our personality through union with something not ourselves, but this union is felt and not seen. The mystic feels that the dissolution of the boundaries which ordinarily separate him from the world is not merely fanciful or illusory, but represents a truth deeper than the facts which meet the eye. (Buermeyer, 76)
By searching for the inner meaning of what a design is supposed to be, or become, the designer/student has a more dynamic relationship with their work. It also allows for the viewer to be swayed in a direction that they normally wouldn’t necessarily lean towards. This style or method of design allows for the viewer/designer/student to gain a more deep-rooted, though not always understood, meaning or kinship to the work that is produced.
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WHICH CLASSROOM?
This is a great assignment and a wonderful opportunity to be able to combine English or literature with design. Although, the assignment involves the use of metaphors, similes, and philosophy, it does not mean that there cannot be an infusion of this sort of project in other classrooms. Language is everywhere and so are the objects that can become personified through them.
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DESIGN ASSIGNMENTS –
ART IMPLEMENTATION